


Tell it Backwards

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Torture, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8291428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: Seamus writes. Dean draws. They do not cope well.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carolinecrane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/gifts).



> The title is from Carol Ann Duffy's "The Last Post". This is essentially Dean and Seamus trying to copea with the load of issues the war gave them and, essentially, failing.

Five years after the war ends, the first Alexandria Flynn book comes out. It is full of bright lights and dark corners, strange lands and stranger people, a sense that something is slightly off and a twisting timeline. Dean Thomas is lauded for his intricate artwork, Seamus Finnegan for his peculiar storytelling, and both for their incredible attention to detail. When asked where they learned how to show such minute attention, they both shrug and say that it was how they were taught.

Technically, they're not lying. Evading the Snatchers for months on end gave you an incredible sense of detail; withstanding hours of torture daily taught you how to focus enough on the small details to block out the pain. The war is simply unmentioned, just as how the basis for the magic in Seamus' books and creatures in Dean's drawings are unmentionable. The answers are obvious for anyone willing to look, and the fact that most people don't is simply a stroke of luck for them.

No one notices the scars on Dean's hands that slash right across his knuckles. No one notices how Seamus' hands shake when he gets nervous, an aftereffect of overexposure to the cruciatus curse. No one notices the world hidden just out of their sight that so many of their peculiar details come from. No one notices the references to the Second Wizarding war, the year of hell they survived apart.

Seamus writes. Dean draws. They claim to be coping well; if the war is unmentioned and they are together, they're fine. Despite that claim, the war's shadow hangs over them; even years later, they still sleep back-to-back so that no Death Eaters can sneak up on them. Even on good days, the feeling of impending death hangs over them like a burial shroud; motifs of death sneak into every drawing and every story is written at least partially backwards. 

In the first days after the war, before the trials start, they are asked to put down the war year onto paper. Dean's is no masterpiece but manages to stay coherent; the detailed doodles in the margins of daggers and torture devices what were either grim reapers or Death Eaters are ignored by the court scribe. Seamus' keeps coming out wrong; he starts out fine, but then some kind of current ripples through the safe house that neither of them trust is safe and his hands start to shake and what was supposed to be an account of the war starts walking back into their sixth year. Hours later, Seamus is himself again; anything of worth is copied from his previous attempt at testimony onto fresh parchment, and the process starts anew. In the end, it takes four months to have a complete story that isn't being told in reverse, and Dean wonders just what happened to his boyfriend's mind.

At the start of his seventh year, Seamus boards the train alone. Dean has gone into hiding. Before he takes a convoluted path to the station as a measure against anyone finding the safe house, Dean gives him a kiss on the lips. Both worry that it will be the last they will ever get. When Seamus returns that Christmas, the safe house is in shambles and he can barely hold still.

When his hands are steady enough and the Carrows can't find him, Seamus writes the story of this war in reverse. In this story, the safe house rebuilds itself from rubble and Seamus and Dean kiss for the first time after Seamus returns from Hogwarts alone. In this story, the Carrows disappear and Dumbledore rises from the base of the Astronomy Tower. In this story, Natalie, crippled by a demonstration of the bone-breaking hex, stands up to dance again and the dead shake mud from their hair as they come back to life and he and Dean get to live their lives without war looming over them and-

When he reaches their fourth year, Seamus' writing is a mess. If his words could tell history in reverse, he had written their world back to a point where war could be averted but Dean was still with him. If he goes back another year, they will still be trying to figure out their coexistence as boys from completely different backgrounds; if he goes back four, he will never have known this boy who he loves and has changed his life for the better. He starts to write forwards again, telling the story of a brighter future. He keeps writing until he collapses from exhaustion; every second not spent buried in prose is one he has to spend in the present.

Dean spends his seventh year running, being tortured, and then running again. If his heart is racing and there is something to fight, he can ignore the pain in his fingers every time they close around his wand or a pen. During the war, when there is a rush of adrenaline to power through the pain, it is bearable; after the war, when he and Seamus are sharing a room and a bed in a safe house neither is convinced is safe, everything is agony. Drawing had always been his art, and it takes months of therapy for him to even come close to doing what he loved without pain.

Life goes on. The Death Eater trials end. Others start to go back to their lives. Dean and Seamus stay; there is nowhere else they can go. They sleep back-to-back, one watching the window and the other watching the door. Seamus writes in circles, Dean draws death motifs, and both claim to be fine. A year after the war ends, Seamus starts to write.

Four years later, the first Alexandria Flynn book is published, and the muggle world goes wild for this little girl out of her depth in a world tearing itself apart without rhyme or reason. Dean's illustrations, drawn carefully over the course of nine months, make the dark story beautiful. Seamus puts down his pen, satisfied; they have their happy ending now, if only for a moment, and that is enough for him.


End file.
